Wednesday, 8 March 2017

Doing The Rounds: Part Two #11

Shena Mackay is mentioned in the sleevenotes of Saint Etienne Present Songs For Mario’s Café,
a collection that came out on the Sanctuary subsidiary Discotheque in 2004. The
concept was an imaginary soundtrack “for cafés and café folk”, with the title
being a nod in the direction of St Et’s own composition which refers to a
Kentish Town café, and is part of a tradition of songs that pay tribute to real
eating places. The Little Nibble in Dexys’ ‘This is What She’s Like’, Laugh’s
mention of Manchester’s Alasia café in their frantic classic ‘Take Your Time,
Yeah!’ and the gloriously sweet harmony pop of ‘Kardomah Café’ by Liverpool’s
Cherry Boys immediately spring to mind.

It sometimes seems
like there have been hundreds of Saint Etienne related compilations covering
everything under the sun, but this Songs
For Mario’s Café CD, which tied in with a series of short films the group
were making with Paul Kelly about London’s disappearing cafés and tearooms, is
the real deal with sweet soul and beat ballads galore, and a spectacular
opening sequence which takes in Tony Hatch, Donovan, Birmingham schoolkids The
Bobcats, Tammy St John’s version of the Fangette Enzel song ‘Dark Shadows and
Empty Hallways’, Ruth Copeland’s ‘Music Box’, and Candy & the Kisses’ ‘Are
You Trying To Get Rid Of Me Baby’.

Café connoisseur
Bob Stanley’s liner notes mention how he came to London in the mid-1980s and
got involved with the underground pop scene, hanging out at “cafés like the
Regent Milk Bar on Edgware Road, Gattopardo at Kings Cross, and the Oval
Platter on Charing Cross Road for cheap lunch and an hour or so with a paperback
(favourite reads: Richard Brautigan, Shena Mackay, Keith Waterhouse).”

Apart from the joy
of discovering Shena’s earliest books, there was probably for Bob the thrill of
reading Shena’s remarkable Redhill Rococo
which was set among the Surrey people he had grown up with. When that novel
came out in 1986 it was slightly disorientating for those of us who were just discovering
Shena’s 1960s work, rather like the whole thing with Shelagh Delaney and The
Smiths, catching up with A Taste of Honey
and The Lion in Love, and Sweetly Sings The Donkey and Charlie Bubbles, then realising she had
written the beautiful screenplay for the superbly evocative film Dance With A Stranger and belonged just
as much to the present day.

Julie Burchill was
the person who at the time really got behind Redhill Rococo in a massively infectious way, and she was quite
right because it was the most radical novel of the time in the way it portrayed
Pearl Slattery and her chaotic, falling apart family in such an appealing and
sympathetic way.

Shena, herself, has
always been brilliant at working cafés into her stories. For example, in her
debut novella, Eugene Schlumburger meets his mate Charley Baker for a coffee in
the City: “They went into a small café which was empty except for the Italian
proprietor, who was reading a comic. They slid into a yellow plastic seat.
There were red and green plastic tomatoes containing tomato sauce and pink salt
and pepper flowers on the yellow speckled tables.”

In Music Upstairs, Sidonie kills time in
cheap cafés, trying to make a coffee last. In An Advent Calendar, apart from John Wood’s parents’ transport café,
there is a scene where he goes to the Wimpy on Upper Street, Islington, and is
put off by the skinheads sitting in there: “Its décor was typical of its kind;
to John it looked frightening; circles of cropped heads above marbled and
mottled Formica, ketchup-colored chairs, rings of heavy brown boots on the
floor.”

Jay in Dunedin dreams of returning in triumph
to the Double Egg, a working man’s café: “He would come back one day, clean and
shaven with money in his pocket, and order a double-egg breakfast with all the
trimmings. The works.” In the short story Barbarians
the loathsome Ian Donaldson comes unstuck in a Portuguese café a couple of
miles from home. In Heligoland there
is the Gipsy Rose Café presided over by the lovely Rita. And the tea room at
the Horniman Museum pops up in Dunedin
and Heligoland.

Shena’s Heligoland came out in early 2003,
shortly after Saint Etienne’s Finisterre
LP was released, which was a lovely coincidence: old school fans of the
Shipping Forecast ahoy! Shena mentions a Saint Etienne church in her story Swansong, and actually appears in the film
Finisterre: A Film About London whichSaint
Etienne made with Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans. In the booklet which accompanied
the original DVD release Michael Bracewell praises the poetic voiceover track
which is interspersed with commentary from a variety of figures including Shena,
Vic Godard, and Mark Perry.

Shena’s brief
appearance is brilliant, and very much one of the highlights of the film. She
speaks very precisely, softly, sounding a little distracted, dreamy, then
coming back into focus vigorously, over footage of the then threatened New
Piccadilly café which is very much part of the Saint Etienne London mythology.
She refers to using a One Day Travelcard and how travelling around the
metropolis has become very unpleasant, everything taking far longer, there
being too many people, with general standards of behaviour on buses and tubes
going down the tube (which is a perfect Shena-ism), but how sometimes she get that London feeling, and
remembers why she loves it.

At the end of her Finisterre appearance Shena mentions how
she loves the rain and finds it invigorating. Every time that appears on the
screen it seems as though Blossom Dearie should come in right on cue to sing
about how she loves London in the
rain. Blossom actually appears in Shena’s story A Pair of Spoons where in one of the great moments in literature a
police inspector appears in Vivien and Bonnie’s shop and starts to sing along
to ‘Moonlight Saving Time’, adding “I caught one of her shows at the Pizza on
the Park.”

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